How to Set Yourself Up For Product-Based Companies
Product-based companies, this is a very commonly used word among the IT crowd these days. If you are wondering what a product-based company is, let me explain. There are broadly two types of IT companies: service-based and product-based. Service-based companies are the companies that provide services to other companies. They work for a third party. Whereas product-based companies are those companies that have their own products and their employees work on those products. And people prefer to work in product-based companies. Why? Because the salary and perks offered by product-based companies are far better than service-based companies. Examples of service-based companies are Infosys, Accenture, TCS, Wipro, etc. A few examples of product-based companies are Google, Amazon, Paypal, Morgan Stanley, PayTM, etc. Now that we know what a product-based company is and what the benefits are, the next question that arises is how to get a job at one of these companies.
How to Prepare For Product-Based Companies
Let’s now look at how you should prepare to get a job at these product-based companies.
1. Coding Interview
Perparing for coding interview is a very important step in the overall interview process.
For coding interviews, you need learn a few things.
Data Structures
One of the fundamentals of programming is data structures. They are used to store and organize data in a meaningful way. You should learn about arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists, binary trees, binary search trees, etc
Important Algorithms
Algorithms are essential for coding interviews. They help you to arrive at the solution and are as important if not more important than data structures. Some algorithms that you must prepare for the coding interview are the backtracking algorithm, divide & conquer, binary search, dynamic programming, sliding window, etc.
2. Low-Level Design Interview
The next step is to prepare for low-level design interview. Low-level design (LLD) is a type of component-level system design in which you define the components (classes) and the relationships between them, among other aspects.
You need to learn about OOPS principles, SOLID principles, and design patterns in order to effectively prepare for the low-level design interview.
3. High-Level Design Interview
The next is a high-level design interview. While preparing for high-level design interview, it’s important to learn a few basic concepts. Some important topics/ concepts to learn for high-level design interviews are consistent hashing, load balancing, scaling, sharding, etc.
A good practice tool for high-level design interviews is a blackboard or you can use a pen and paper for the same. You need to draw different components, establish links between them, and determine how they talk to each other.
4. Behavioral/ HR Round
Behavioral rounds are interview rounds where the interviewer will ask you questions based on situations and you have to answer them. It can be questions like what will you do if you have a conflict with your manager. Some more examples are:
- How would you hire your team?
- What qualities make you fit for the job?
- If you have a workplace conflict, how would you approach to resolve it?
- How do you provide value to this organization?
Strategy to use for Cracking Product-based Company Interviews
1. Coding Interview
For coding interview, you need to practice a lot. And by lot, I mean a lot! There are a lot of resources on the Internet that enables people to learn coding very easily. To learn coding, there are a lof of websites like Leetcode, HackerRank, CodingNinjas that provide a platform for users to learn. There are a lot of questions on these platforms that can be accessed free of cost. You can come up with a solution and try it online.
2. Low-Level Design
For low-level design, your analytical and design skills have to be very sharp. For low-level design, you need to think how many classes are involved, what interfaces there’ll be, and how these interact with one another. There are coding platforms that are listed above where you can learn low-level design too.
3. High-Level Design
There are some tools/ websites that cater to high-level design. Some of these are draw.io, Creately that are very good for creating high-level design(HLD). You can pick any big system like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and try to come up with a design for the same. Once done, compare your design with a number of designs already available on the internet. And see how your design fares.
Now that you know how to crack interviews at product-based companies, go ahead and start your preparation. Good luck!!!